


Into My Arms

by itsnotbleak



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Drabble, Late Night Conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 09:46:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16060538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsnotbleak/pseuds/itsnotbleak
Summary: “If it all went away tomorrow,” he says, “I’d probably be okay. If I still had you, and I could breath fine, and I didn’t get pneumonia once. That’d be okay.”“But you wouldn’t pick it.”Steve rubs a hand over Bucky’s back.  “No,” he says. “I wouldn’t pick it.”





	Into My Arms

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last night and I don't know what it is but it doesn't fit in any of my WIPs so, ah, here!

“Would you give it up?” says Bucky one night. It’s late; it’s dark. They’re in bed, Bucky’s cheek resting on the smooth plane of Steve’s chest, his arms so comfortable he’s forgotten where, exactly, they are. Bucky can’t see Steve’s face; Steve can’t see his. Perfect conditions for asking questions when you’re not sure you want to see the truth in the answer; but, perversely, too, perfect conditions for telling truths you’re not sure you’re ready to share. “Would you give it up, if you could still be healthy?”

“Give what up, Buck?” says Steve. His voice is a rumble that Bucky feels as much as he hears.

“This,” says Bucky, running a hand down Steve’s flank; tracing the soft skin that does a much better job of covering his ribs than it used to. So that’s where his arms are; where they belong, one on each side of Steve. “The fancy bod.”

“You trying to say you’re not a fan of my physique?” says Steve.

Bucky smiles into the darkness; presses a kiss into Steve’s chest. “No.”

“So what’s the deal? I’m small again, but healthy? Can I scale a wall? Run fast? What about healing?”

“None of that,” says Bucky. “You’re just human. As you were, but without the health problems. Your spine’s straight and you can tell red grapes from green but you’re still five foot nothing with the boniest elbows in Brooklyn.”

“I was taller than _that_ ,” says Steve.

“Uhuh,” says Bucky.

Steve thinks. He feels weightless, in the dark; connected to nothing but Bucky. He thinks sometimes it’d be nice to take it off; take off the muscles with the suit and the shield; shed the skin of Captain America and become little old Steve Rogers again. Invisible; underestimated; nothing special to nobody but Bucky.

“If it all went away tomorrow,” he says, “I’d probably be okay. If I still had you, and I could breath fine, and I didn’t get pneumonia once. That’d be okay.”

“But you wouldn’t pick it.”

Steve rubs a hand over Bucky’s back.  “No,” he says. “I wouldn’t pick it.”

“Why not?” says Bucky, even though he thinks he knows the answer. It was never about _health_ , not for Steve.

“Because,” says Steve. “What if something happened? To you, or Sam? Or Natasha?”

“What if there’s another war?” says Bucky, because he’s right, of course he’s right; Steve Rogers doesn’t want to give up his superpowers because then the next time he wants to take a bullet for the whole damn world it might not be enough.

Steve huffs a laugh; his chest swells with it. “Well, yeah.”

“I got your number, Rogers,” says Bucky. He closes his eyes.

“What about you?” says Steve. “Would you change me back?”

“Nah,” says Bucky. “You’re exhausting when you’ve got a point to prove.” It’s the truth, or near enough. Ain’t nobody ever going to take the fight out of Steve; keep him this way and at least he’s got some chance of winning.

Steve hums; it’s non-committal, like he’s not quite convinced.

“I’m not going to lie,” says Bucky, because what’s the point, in the darkness? “Sometimes I miss it. The old you, the one I could tuck under my chin.”

Steve isn’t surprised; he’d figured as much. The grin on Bucky’s face back then, when he’d finally caught sight of Steve, all of Steve, in the light of day, was, well. It didn’t meet his eyes. To be fair none of his smiles did, then, in those days after Azzano, but still. It had made Steve sad; he’d wanted to preen, to show off his new body for Bucky and win his approval all over again, but Bucky had looked at it like something lost, not something gained. Steve thinks he understands it now, but it still makes him sad.

But Bucky’s not done. “Sometimes I miss it,” he says. “But then, I don’t think it’s your body that I miss. I think it’s who we used to be.” Bucky missed the Steve Rogers who’d never had to kill a man; he missed the sweet innocence of their life, before. He missed lying in the darkness just like this, in a smaller bed, limbs tangled with a smaller Steve, and thinking it would be the worst sin he’d ever commit. He missed having sins he’d willingly go to hell for; he missed having sins he’d chosen for himself. But what he’s got now, _this_ , is hard-won, and he’s not about to give it up.

“It’s just nostalgia,” he says. “I don’t think it’d take me more than a day in 1939 to remember our lives weren’t so easy back then. Besides,” he pats Steve gently on the side. “Then I’d miss this big lug.”

Steve feels gratified, in a way he doesn’t want to delve into. He wraps his arms around Bucky in the darkness and kisses the top of his head. “Sometimes,” he says, his turn to let something loose in the dark, “I catch myself thinking, ‘I’m so glad he’s here’. And then I remember how you got here and I think, ‘Jesus, Rogers, are you really that selfish?’”

He braces himself, for what, he’s not quite sure. For Bucky to pull away, to recoil from the man who revels in his suffering. But Bucky just laughs; an exhale of breath that raises goosebumps on Steve’s skin. “Christ, Stevie, how do you think I feel?” he says. “You’re glad I’m here? _I’m_ glad I’m here, and that’s worse. Am I so in love with you that everything they did to me just fades into the distance, like it’s okay, or something? Like it’s worth it, to be here with you again? What kind of lovesick—” He laughs again; another breath. He’s alive he’s alive he’s alive, thrums Steve’s traitorous brain, never quite over the thrill. “It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s something,” agrees Steve.

“I don’t think it has to work that way,” says Bucky, after a moment. There’s a contemplative tone in his voice. “I think you can be happy where you are and still wish you could have got there differently.”

“If you say so,” says Steve. It sounds convenient, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay to take the easy out, for once.

“I do,” says Bucky. He sounds sleepy, suddenly; it really is late. “After everything we’ve been through I ain’t going to feel guilty for happiness, and I don’t want you to either.”

Steve closes his eyes. ‘I want doesn’t get’, says a voice in his head. It’s Mrs Barnes, of course it is; Steve overheard the reprimand hundreds of times as a kid. Bucky used to want all sorts of things he couldn’t have. He doesn’t, anymore, at least not aloud.

“Okay,” Steve says, and they drift off together, unmoored and weightless, into the dark.


End file.
